I, Rigoberta Menchu: A Guatemalan Indian Woman's Journey

bob spires: Worth it, plus the controversy surrounding the book makes you have to really contemplate narrative and memory and speaking for a whole people's experience

United States on Jul 11, 2023

Daryl: I lived in Guatemala for about a year. My only regret is that I didn't read this book first. Fear of the military was spread to the expat community. Because we knew no indigenous people that also spoke Spanish we didn't understand the Mayan culture. The strength of the indigenous people was evident every day. I was horrified to see the tiny women and men who strapped wood, water and other things to their heads while they walked barefoot and had babies on their back while walking long distances barefoot. The nobility of the Guatemalan Mayan communities was obvious and the treatment they received at the hands of the ladinos was truly horrible. The banks had cat walks with soldiers pointing guns at the customers. The poor Mayans could stand in line for long periods of time because whenever a ladino came in they jumped the line in front of the poor Mayans. Guatemala is a truly beautiful country marred by the racist behaviors of the ladino population. This book really touched me and it is obvious why Rigoberta received a Nobel Prize. Her wisdom,intelligence and courage is an inspiration. It's one of the best books I've ever read....and I read 2 or 3 books a week. She is inspirational.

United States on Sep 14, 2022

Michelle: This story will inspire you and make you take a good, hard look at just how fortunate most of us are who live in the United States. We can never truly know the experiences of another unless we walk in their shoes. Rigoberta Menchu will take you places that will disturb and enlighten. I have been fascinated with Guatemala and its Mayan people and because of this book, look at life a little differently now. If you have a passion for learning about other cultures, this is a must read.

United States on Dec 19, 2021

Cristina Danila: What a revelation! You get to find out the terrible things the Indians in Guatemala have gone through and the mental resistance and heart that they fight back with. Incredible vivid snaps of their culture, traditions about love, death, baptism....Rigoberta is one of my heroes now and she will always be.
Thank you for this book!

Netherlands on Mar 05, 2020

Patrick F: Beautiful, but terrible. This is the story of Rigoberta Menchu Tum and her life as a native Guatemalan struggling to survive amidst poverty, encroaching industrial logging interests, political corruption, and racism. Born to a family of subsistence farmers and itinerant workers, Menchu’s life was balanced on the razor’s edge of starvation. She saw family members lose their lives from hunger and from the brutal treatment received from supervisors at the coastal farms (including spraying pesticides from airplanes with complete disregard to the workers--and children!--laboring in the fields). Menchu survived and learned Spanish in order serve as an advocate for other native people. She helped to form and organize parties of political resistance as well as taught native people methods of self defense. The style of the writing is perhaps what proves to be most captivating about the book. Having learned to write in Spanish only three years before penning this book, Menchu’s style is simple, frank, and honest. The translator has taken pains to retain the vocabulary and style of the original text even including much of Menchu’s repetition. This lends the text a raw, journalistic...

United States on Apr 22, 2019

kate: Wonderful book . Thought provoking, informative and brave.

United Kingdom on Nov 18, 2018

BCReader: Superb expose of Guatemala's horrific times.

Canada on Jun 20, 2017

Amazon Customer: It's a good book that describes the struggles of the Mayan population in Guatemala. It is best to read in conjunction with different articles that criticize this book and also the foreword. This was not written by Rigoberta and it is important to consider the politics of translation as well as transcription. She gave her testimony to Elizabeth Burgos, who collected the information from the interview in Spanish and created the text. At the time when Rigoberta gave her testimony, she only had been speaking Spanish for three years.

I read this for one of my college classes at Princeton and I just discussed this book at my book club.

Another thing to consider is the genre that this book falls in. It is not a memoir or an autobiography. It falls under the category of latin american literature known as tesimonio. This differs from the direct translation of testimony. I recommend readers do some research on the politics of testimonio and whether or not all that is said is needed to be true.

It is a great book to start a conversation on the politics of ethnicity and whether books like these are needed to be entirely truthful or factual!

United States on Oct 22, 2015

Bob Neill: I have been to Guatemala 9-times since 1995. I have been into many villages like the one Rigoberta lived in. I experienced much of the hardships and poverty noted in the book. In Guatemala the poor fight every day for survial. The treatment of native (mayan) people leaves one speachless. 60% are very poor-- 30% work at some kind of job--10% the very rich have everything and they are not going to share with anyone. The conflict(civil war) ended in 1997---but there is much more that needs changing----corruption from the top down to the bottom still is an every day fight. I have seen changes--but the attitudes must change also, before progress can move onward.........

Canada on May 28, 2012

Trish: This book was recommended reading by the tour company we are going to Guatemala with, so I thought it would be a good insight into the ways of the indigenous people of Guatemala as we are visiting many of the villages on our trip. Yes, I think it's helped me a lot preparing for the trip but more importantly it's a wonderful story, beautifully written, about the life of one woman and one HUGE EYE OPENER!!. I couldn't put it down and as I came towards the end of the book I stayed up until three in the morning because I needed to finish the story. If there is one small criticism I think that as the book was written a few years ago now, it would have been nice to have a footnote to say if Rigoberta is still alive, in Guatemala, or what has happened in the intervening years.

United Kingdom on Aug 14, 2010